CHEWING GUM

Annie

This is one of those rare things, a song that not only sticks in your head like a pitchfork, but is just as tricky to remove as well. It's light, fluffy and cheerful - actually, it's almost everything I don't like about pop music. God knows why I can't bring myself to dislike it, then. Perhaps the best reason I can think of is that it knows how far along the skipping-through-the-daisies road it can go before it has to stop. Some pop songs are that sugary that if they were items of confectionery you'd have dentists all over the country a) trying to get them banned and b) secretly rubbing their hands in glee at all the extra trade about to come their way. This one knows how far is too far and I suppose that's what makes it good. Yeah, that'll do, I'll settle for that.

RADIO

Client

If this doesn't make the Top 20, then there's just no justice in the world. This is quality from start to finish. It's miserable, dark, electronic and it reminds me of the days when the Pet Shop Boys were good (ie. almost anything up to the point where they started putting traffic cones on their heads), in fact, if I was in the mood to do a lazy description of this song it'd be "Female Pet Shop Boys circa 1986-90" but I won't take the easy way out even though effectively I just have. Work that one out. We start off with a piano riff that sounds a bit like the one at the start of New Order's Crystal, then the drum machine kicks in, followed by the singer accompanied by a keyboard that sounds as though the only keys on it that aren't gathering dust are the ones on the far left hand side. Mind you, the music's only the half of it, the cynical and world-weary lyrics couldn't have made themselves more at home here if they tried. I said earlier that it ought to make the Top 20, but knowing the world of popular music as little as I do, it'll probably be lucky to even scrape the Top 40. Still, it's a start.

BUTTERFLIES AND HURRICANES

Muse

Listening to the first minute or so of this, I thought to myself "Blimey, are Muse going disco? Surely not". That's how it seems, you have a bass riff, the singer putting his lines across in a quiet, understated manner that rock singers usually don't even know exists and underpinning all this is what sounds very much like a disco beat. It's a bit spooky, I can tell you. Then the drummer suddenly wakes up and disengages the auto-pilot, a piano doesn't so much come crashing in as get thrown down the stairs and the Muse that we know and love are back. As if to prove this point, we have a false ending thrown in as well, with orchestral stuff and everything. Your average rock single this is not. In fact, it's pretty damned good. There's more invention here than you'll find in a million Cheeky Girls singles - not that I want them to release a million singles trying to prove me wrong - and it shows that when Muse are on top form there's no other band around that sounds remotely like them.

PERSONAL JESUS

Marilyn Manson

I bet Depeche Mode are dead chuffed at the timing of this release. There they are, getting ready to release their remix album and re-issue Enjoy The Silence (more of which later) and then Marilyn Manson gives the world his take on one of their finest moments and steals the limelight. However, when a cover version is this good it doesn't matter. He's sensibly kept most of the things that made the original work, but he's twisted them into something rather sinister. Instead of the glam-rock-esque sound Basildon's finest gave the song, we now have a ten foot high tidal wave of noise, complete with screeching guitars and Marilyn Manson singing "Lift up the receiver, I'll make you a believer" and making that line sound more creepy than Martin Gore ever intended when he wrote it. This song is proof that sometimes, just sometimes, a cover version can be as good as the original.